Barcelona are closing on a first La Liga title since 2019, but off the pitch the Negreira case looms over the club.

They have been charged with corruption concerning payments made to the former vice-president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee and his son, in a case brought by the Spanish public prosecutor’s office.

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Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, who held the above role between 1994 and 2018, is also facing charges of corruption, as are Sandro Rosell, Barcelona club president from 2010-14, and his successor Josep Maria Bartomeu, who held the position until 2020.

Enriquez Negreira has denied ever favouring Barcelona in terms of refereeing decisions. The Catalan club have admitted hiring an “external consultant” who provided reports “related to professional refereeing” but they and the individuals involved all deny any wrongdoing.

Last week, European football’s governing body UEFA announced it would also be investigating the club, with ethics and disciplinary inspectors appointed to look into the matter.

The latest twist involves the leaking of hundreds of pages of information related to the case, ranging from bank statements to court papers and documents from the tax authorities, prosecutor’s office and Spanish FA.

The Athletic has seen a large number of these leaked documents, and they reveal important details about the situation…

What do we know so far?

Three weeks ago, FC Barcelona, as a legal entity, were charged with corruption over payments they made to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice-president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee, and to his son, Javier Enriquez.

The investigation conducted by the Spanish prosecutor’s office also included charges against the club for malfeasance and false documentation. Enriquez Negreira is also facing charges, as are former Barcelona presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu.

Prosecutors started this investigation after Spain’s tax authorities noticed several tax irregularities concerning DASNIL 95, a company owned by Enriquez Negreira. When the tax inspectors looked closer, they realised DASNIL 95 was only working for Barcelona and forwarded the case to the prosecutor’s office.

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The broader investigation confirmed payments from Barcelona to Enriquez Negreira’s companies between 2001 and 2018 worth €7.3million (£6.4m, $7.9m today).

The Spanish law relating to the crime of “continued corruption” was established in 2010. Since 2015, it has included a specific section targeting corruption in sport. The prosecutor’s investigation only includes payment records dating back to 2014, as before that the activities weren’t typified as a crime in Spanish law.

Prosecutors have also charged parties in this case with false administration and falsifying a commercial document — two former club officials from Bartomeu’s time as president: Oscar Grau and Albert Soler.

All the parties involved — Barca, Enriquez Negreira, Bartomeu, Rosell, Grau and Soler — have previously been approached for comment by The Athletic.

La Liga president Javier Tebas has confirmed the body won’t be applying disciplinary sanctions to Barcelona as “it’s been five years since the end of their payments to DASNIL and these types of sanctions expire three years after the events have taken place according to our rules”.

Both the Spanish FA and Spain’s High Council for Sports, a governmental body, have previously told The Athletic they will respect the legal process before considering any action of their own.

But the club remain under investigation by the Spanish prosecutor’s office and also UEFA, who would have the power to bring sporting sanctions as any offence would not be time-barred under its rules.

What have we learnt from the leaked documents?

This all started on April 28 last year.

That was when the tax authorities sent their report to the prosecutor’s office informing them they had found indications of potential criminal activity during their investigation of DASNIL 95.

One of the documents from the tax authorities includes the only statement — that we know of — from Enriquez Negreira in the whole case. Five months later, he presented a medical document stating he is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and therefore not in a fit state to make any further comments.

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There is plenty to be gleaned from Enriquez Negreira’s statement to the tax authorities.

For example, his declaration that his points of contact at Barcelona during the period being investigated were the club’s presidents, first Rosell and then Bartomeu. This jars with what Bartomeu later told prosecutors. He stated he did not deal personally with Enriquez Negreira and only knew him from being a referee in the past and from reading his name in the media. Bartomeu claimed he only dealt with Enriquez Negreira’s son, Javier Enriquez.

According to the tax authorities report, Enriquez Negreira revealed the most relevant tasks he was carrying out for Barcelona, none of which are overly controversial:

• He advised Barcelona to ask the Spanish FA to allow clubs to register more than 25 first-team players per season
• He suggested they employ an interlocutor to take care of, and improve, their relationship with the FA
• He urged Barcelona to send a club representative to every farewell event for referees who were retiring, in order to improve their public image
• He offered counsel on which bookings and red cards could be appealed and potentially overturned, depending on the decision of the referee in each case
• He told Barcelona to formally notify the FA or the refereeing committee of every visit the club would pay to their facilities
• He shared his general know-how on how the FA operate, and also to keep the club informed about any disagreements between the FA and La Liga, as well as profiling any candidates who might occupy powerful roles within the institutions.

There was no evidence of how he and his son were spending the money they received from Barcelona.

“We haven’t found any third party to which money had been destined to go,” the report states, referring to Barcelona potentially paying referees or altering the result of a game. “There is no clear evidence on other crimes” other than the tax wrongdoings investigated, it added. Finally, they stated the lack of evidence on where the money was going “could be indications of illegal behaviours”, and that is why they passed the file on to the prosecutor’s office.

The tax authorities’ report left it up to the prosecutors to make any firm conclusions.

Then we move to the full report from the prosecutors, which was signed and filed on March 10 this year. That report includes, from January 2014 to June 2018, a record of 59 payments from Barcelona to Enriquez Negreira’s companies, either DASNIL 95 or NILSAD.

Fifty-four of the 59 payments were for “counselling on technical videos”. The others — which happen to be the five largest payments, ranging between €84,000 and €120,000 — are labelled as “recording and viewing of international games”. They specify work on the 2014 World Cup, 2016 European Championship, 2018 World Cup and Spanish clubs’ games in UEFA competitions.

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What did Barcelona gain, as an institution, from reports on games between national teams or “counselling on technical videos”? That is unclear. In June 2017, they made a payment of €90,000 for recordings and viewings of Spanish national team games. Spain hadn’t played since March of that year (a World Cup qualifier against Israel and a friendly with France), and the matches they played that month (the June) were a friendly with Colombia and a World Cup qualifier against North Macedonia.

Neither Barcelona nor Enriquez Negreira could provide documents evidencing the former referee’s work for the club. The investigation has, however, collected more than 500 reports by his son, Javier Enriquez, on referees’ performances in Barcelona games.

A former referee, Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez, criticised Javier Enriquez for providing Barcelona with those files when he had never been a referee himself.

“What can he know about referees if he has never refereed once in his life?,” Iturralde Gonzalez told Spanish radio station Cadena SER. “It’s like if I start reporting about tennis. I can see as many games as I want to, but at the end of the day I won’t have a clue about how it is from the inside.”

Prosecutors also confirmed that from 2016-19, Enriquez Negreira withdrew €550,000 from his companies in cash. “There is a record of card payments with money from the company for significant amounts — enough to cover their personal costs of living. The sum of cash taken out mentioned was not particularly needed,” the report states.

Enriquez Negreira did not personally withdraw any of that money from banks, he always sent two company employees to do it. The final destination of that money could not be traced.

When contacted by The Athletic, Barcelona, Bartomeu, Enriquez Negreira and his son Javier all declined to comment on any of the details in the leaked documents.

Will there be punishments?

It’s still too early to know. As mentioned earlier in the piece, La Liga president Tebas confirmed his body is unable to apply disciplinary sanctions against Barcelona.

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“It’s not possible for there to be any sporting punishment from our side,” Tebas said when news of the scandal broke in February. “It’s been five years since those payments stopped and these kinds of breaches are time-barred in our rulebook three years after taking place.”

The legal process against the Catalan club and those other parties involved is ongoing, but in the leaked documents seen by The Athletic, the prosecution and the tax authorities have not found clear evidence of corruption. There is no record or suggestion in those papers of payments to active referees or match-fixing.

Then there is the UEFA case.

European football’s governing body opened its disciplinary investigation into Barcelona and assigned two investigators to oversee the Negreira case. From there, it will decide whether to take any further steps.

UEFA disciplinary regulations state the measures which can be imposed on clubs range from “a warning, reprimand and fine to disqualification from competitions in progress and/or exclusion from future competitions and withdrawal of a title or an award”.

What are the next steps?

In the short term, we wait for developments at UEFA’s end.

UEFA is going to make a decision sooner, with an outcome expected before the start of next season. If the club are found guilty, they would have the option of appealing the decision to the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

As for the charges raised in Spain, the whole legal process is expected to take years to complete, given the magnitude of the investigation and the amount of documentation collected from all sides.

What have Barcelona said?

The main public statements from Barcelona have come through their social media channels, with club president Joan Laporta sending a message to their members, known as socios. Laporta has expressed his belief that this is a “campaign” orchestrated against Barcelona, and denied any wrongdoing.

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“The campaign we are suffering from is not by chance, you all know that. It aims, in the short term, to destabilise the team. In the medium term, to control Barca and take over,” he said. “There will be time, and I am eager, to explain to you who, why and how they are orchestrating this campaign. Have no doubt that we will defend ourselves; and not only that, we will attack.”

Reports in the Catalan media this week revealed that Laporta will send a letter to all socios that will address the situation, will reiterate that Barcelona are innocent of what they’ve been accused of and plans to explain the steps the club will take to defend themselves.

Club sources confirmed to The Athletic they are planning a press conference where Laporta will take questions about the Negreira case. There is no confirmed date for this, but mid-April is the timeframe the club is aiming for at this point.

(Photo: Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)